Anderson, South Carolina
Long embedded in the American psyche has been the idea that property values would rise in perpetuity. Collective group-think embraced the idea we could buy most anything ‘real’ and resell it for a vast profit. Flipping houses was seen as the way to get rich quick. It was not long before banks and lenders of every ilk were stumbling over themselves to make 125% cash out thirty-year mortgages. By clicking on the right ad we could repaper our houses for thirty years and get 25% of their value back as cash. Home Depot and Detroit, here we come. Americans were suddenly building $100,000 kitchens with granite slabs and driving $70,000 sedans like we once drove Ford Comets. Using equity access lines of credit made the whole process even easier. Many banks provided buyers with check books allowing drafts against current home equity. For decades Americans used their houses as piggy banks and ATMs, believing in the mantras of rising property values and secure employment.
Something went bump in the night in late 2008 and we all uttered a collective, “oops.” Eight million people lost their jobs. Millions more lost their houses. Most of us lost our serenity. The collapse of equity and housing markets is old news. What’s not old news is the newly emerging possibility that housing might have just begun its collapse. Economists and financial pundits alike are now starting to say things like housing values may drop another 75% from their August 2009 levels. The national myth of ever-rising property values has turned into a waking nightmare. In some areas housing values have dropped 78%. In some metro areas the market value of more than half the housing stock is less than the mortgage balances on those same houses. Owners are considered ‘under water.’
For certain, it has never made sense that houses or stocks or most anything would rise in value in perpetuity. In 1920 the typical mortgage required 50% down and repayment in seven years. Obviously, this precluded any kind of senseless price speculation. 125% cash out mortgages for thirty years changed that. Now two generations get to give it all back. Twenty years of property value increases in Florida have been erased. Now we see multi-million dollars houses in Detroit being bulldozed because 93,000 properties there have been abandoned. The median home value in Detroit is less that the MSRP of my car. A grand house in Pennsylvania from the Gilded Industrial contains about 100,000 square feet in 100 rooms. Replacement cost is estimated at $212 million. It is rotting and has been cannibalized. Our decks are certainly listing.
The legendary mobility of Americans has been incited to a new frenzy by vast numbers of foreclosures and millions of others simply walking away from their houses, having decided it makes no sense to pay scarce dollars on a property worth less than the loan balance and losing even more value daily. I am starting to think the stern of our country might just stand up soon. We are not going to like this one bit. In the past three days I have been in places within twenty five miles of here that feel truly third world in spirit, infrastructure, and morality. It’s hard to imagine these are the same wholesome places I first saw twenty years ago when moving here.
A third of the housing stock on my street is either empty, for rent, or sale. There is hardly an intact nuclear family on my street, not to mention the half dozen suicides, attempted homicides, and all that which I do not know about. There is virtually no residual fabric of community here now. I can put up ceiling fans for women on disability, install curtain rods for widows, ad infinitum; it won’t repair ruptures in the hull of our economy. It’s not going to put responsible people back in these empty houses. It certainly does not seem to have any effect whatever on making community and neighborhood a more compelling alternative to the powerful urge to ‘flip’ houses, buy bigger, move up; to an oppressively desolate gated sub-division without sidewalks or front porches. Want to guess how much community there is in those subdivisions with 75 percent of houses now empty?
There is some sort of collective insanity that prevails with respect to housing. I see families sell paid-for houses and end up with a far inferior house in a more prestigious location. Others sell paid off houses and buy more house than they can conceivably afford. Granite counter-tops have become a strange litmus test of one’s success in life, even if they are installed on cardboard or particle board cabinets. Hardwood floors, once a relic of the 1950s, have again become markers of one’s life success.
An acquaintance bought a house a few months ago. Despite life and finance threatening illness, a bank was willing to give her a thirty-year mortgage which is schedule to pay off when she is in her mid-nineties, if she lives that long. Walking through her house I was taken with how pleasing the interior and exterior look. She revealed wanting to replace the windows, flooring, roof, gutters, and some other things. If she proceeds with this, it could easily add $25,000 to the cost of the house and actually reduce the quality of the house. With careful attention, the needed repairs could be accomplished for about $20.00. Does it make sense to tear out perfectly good insulated windows in a house; pull up flooring that at first glance I thought was new, replace a roof that looks better than mine?
I see daily evidence of people tearing apart their houses; gaining little of nothing in the end, except more debt and bondage to high-stress jobs they detest. Emotions and cultural mantras are hard to overcome. The ‘new normal’ for our culture is proving to be anything but new, normal, or sustainable.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
A Litigious Spirit – The Death of Community 8-24-10
Anderson, South Carolina
The number of lawyers in America is astounding. Recent statistics enumerate 1,143,358 attorneys in the United States or one per 265 citizens. This suggests my small town of 28,000 has more than one hundred alone; as many as 665 in this small mostly rural county. Our small phone book contains twenty-four pages of attorney listings. In France one finds one attorney per 1,403 citizens. As far back as 2006 it’s reported our legal system added $1.6 trillion to domestic gross product, a good part of it as unwilling transfers between defendants and plaintiffs.
Tort law in the United States allows legal counsel to take on clients without any upfront retainer or payment. Arrangements are based on contingency agreements. Clients only ‘pay’ if legal counsel is able to extract an award of ‘damages and compensation’ out of an individual, corporation, insurance company or government entity. Typically in findings against defendants, awards are split 30-70, or thereabouts. To avoid hideous awards by juries, out-of-court settlements are most common. Lawyers and plaintiffs still win - big time. The rest of us generally lose – big time. As Walter Olson succinctly states, “The lawyers' contingency fee -- which, for drummers-up of litigation, is like the battery in the Energizer bunny -- did not become legal everywhere in this country until the 1960s. (It is still flatly prohibited by legal-ethics rules in most countries, as giving lawyers too sharp an incentive to stir up suits and to overplay their clients' hand once in court.)”
Olson cites in one of his acerbic observations, “The direct constant-dollar cost of American tort law, in insurance and related expenses, doubled in the ten years to 1987. Compared with the average advanced democracy with which we compete on world markets, we in America manage to spend from three to five times as much on tort law as a share of our GNP. The gap has been getting wider, too, not narrower.”
My mother often commented on a friend of hers who managed to live life very well by suing for all manner of personal injury. She managed to slip on wet floors in the produce section at the grocery, get nipped by elevator doors in expensive department stores, ad infinitum. My mother did similar things herself. Taking sick with stomach complaints, she came to believe she’d been poisoned by a local restaurant. She eventually received a settlement. Another time she plugged in an extension cord; managing to shock herself and burning her hand. She received a very substantial settlement. She forever gamed health insurance companies; coming out ahead. Those of us paying huge insurance premiums for everything can thank her and her ilk for out-of-control claims experience.
Litigation has become nutzoid. Ben Wattenberg cites celebrated cases. “In 1994, McDonald's was told to pay a woman $2.7 million after she was burned by spilling McDonald's coffee on herself. Her lawyers persuaded the jury that the coffee was too damned hot. The Supreme Court is considering a recent case about BMW of America. A jury decided that the carmakers should pay $4,000 damages to the buyer of a $40,000 car. The charge: BMW did not disclose that they had painted over a $600 blemish before selling it. Fair enough. But the jury also hit BMW with $4 million in punitive damages.” The plaintiff was a highly compensated cardiologist.
A dear friend of mine and her daughter eke out a fragile living running a small mom and pop business, except there is no pop, as he ran off with someone else decades ago. Recently they had the scare of a lifetime. The daughter supplements household income by house sitting and pet minding for friends. Some months ago the daughter and a friend of hers were taking care of animals at two houses. While away from one of these houses, unknown thieves drove a large truck from a nearby barn on the property to the house and loaded up a large heavy safe and disappeared. The truck was later found abandoned. The safe and contents have not been recovered. My friend’s very petite daughter and her friend were named as prime suspects. They were advised by legal counsel to expect to be picked up, jailed, bonded, and subjected to all manner of life stressors only the legal system can mete out. Ten months later they live with uncertainties, not having any closure from this nightmare. What they do know is that half a dozen relationships have been summarily disrupted because someone had an idea something as trivial as money was to be had.
As Olson again cites, “It was only fairly recently, as historical trends go, that the climate in our legal culture changed. Not until roughly the 1960s or 1970s did our law schools really begin to buy into the idea that the way for a country to get more justice (as well as more safety, ethics and so forth) was for more and more people to sue over more and more things. Once that change of ideas had taken place, all the rest was a matter of time. Our legal rules, which for so long had sought to constrain and curb the litigious passion, began enthusiastically stoking it. Reformers vastly liberalized procedure, making it easier for lawyers to shop around for favorable courts in which to file suits, to get the testimony of a dubious hired expert witness admitted to keep a weak case alive, and so forth. Legislators and courts enacted vague laws and standards providing plenty of new grounds to sue, and new chances to collect triple, punitive and intangible damages for such things as emotional distress and humiliation.”
Where have we come in America such that someone who has made poor life choices gets the idea that moneys are to be had from a disabled woman living in a wheelchair? The same place where hot coffee nets $2.7 million?
For seven years I have assisted a disabled friend confined to a motorized wheelchair. Brain tumors, strokes, and other medical misfortunes make her quite dependent on a small disability income while at the same time facing potentially catastrophic medical expenses. She has called me several times recently, highly agitated by fear that a mutual ‘friend’ is about to sue her for personal injury. Another friend called me today expressing the same concern. What was not my business has become my business by virtue of being queried about what to do. All the parties are well known to me and each other.
It seems some weeks ago this friend turned potential plaintiff was assisting my wheelchair-bound friend to get in and out of her lift van. During the course of moving the chair, the potential plaintiff claims to have caught her foot between the wheelchair and the van. I myself have done this a dozen times over the years and never given it a second thought. My feet have been run over by this heavy chair a number of times without consequence, but I wasn’t looking for money.
A spirit of litigation has brought us to believe insurance companies are bottomless pits with printing presses in their cellars, able to make out-of-court settlements against threat of a huge in-court jury award. Expert witnesses can be bought on the internet. We sue every conceivable entity in the land; hoping astute contingency lawyers can win the litigation lottery for us. We may win a big damage and emotional duress award but in the things that matter most, we loss it all. Someone who has suddenly become known for having a litigious spirit has potential defendant/friends now battening down the hatches, heading for the exits. I myself am one of these. I cannot but believe this woman has just cast herself into a form of personal exile in this town. The very people who most actively tried to assimilate this potential litigant into our community are those running the fastest.
Fear of litigation suddenly has become a more powerful driver of behavior than the desire for community. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this immediate of damage control behavior in a group of people who have been violated in the deepest spiritual and emotional ways. Maslow had it right when he said that we must first fulfill our security and survival needs. Only then can we pay attention to fulfilling our higher level needs to interact and belong. Right now we are running.
No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
I need not wonder why those who serve money would despise us enough to name us as defendants, even hapless little ladies in wheelchairs.
The number of lawyers in America is astounding. Recent statistics enumerate 1,143,358 attorneys in the United States or one per 265 citizens. This suggests my small town of 28,000 has more than one hundred alone; as many as 665 in this small mostly rural county. Our small phone book contains twenty-four pages of attorney listings. In France one finds one attorney per 1,403 citizens. As far back as 2006 it’s reported our legal system added $1.6 trillion to domestic gross product, a good part of it as unwilling transfers between defendants and plaintiffs.
Tort law in the United States allows legal counsel to take on clients without any upfront retainer or payment. Arrangements are based on contingency agreements. Clients only ‘pay’ if legal counsel is able to extract an award of ‘damages and compensation’ out of an individual, corporation, insurance company or government entity. Typically in findings against defendants, awards are split 30-70, or thereabouts. To avoid hideous awards by juries, out-of-court settlements are most common. Lawyers and plaintiffs still win - big time. The rest of us generally lose – big time. As Walter Olson succinctly states, “The lawyers' contingency fee -- which, for drummers-up of litigation, is like the battery in the Energizer bunny -- did not become legal everywhere in this country until the 1960s. (It is still flatly prohibited by legal-ethics rules in most countries, as giving lawyers too sharp an incentive to stir up suits and to overplay their clients' hand once in court.)”
Olson cites in one of his acerbic observations, “The direct constant-dollar cost of American tort law, in insurance and related expenses, doubled in the ten years to 1987. Compared with the average advanced democracy with which we compete on world markets, we in America manage to spend from three to five times as much on tort law as a share of our GNP. The gap has been getting wider, too, not narrower.”
My mother often commented on a friend of hers who managed to live life very well by suing for all manner of personal injury. She managed to slip on wet floors in the produce section at the grocery, get nipped by elevator doors in expensive department stores, ad infinitum. My mother did similar things herself. Taking sick with stomach complaints, she came to believe she’d been poisoned by a local restaurant. She eventually received a settlement. Another time she plugged in an extension cord; managing to shock herself and burning her hand. She received a very substantial settlement. She forever gamed health insurance companies; coming out ahead. Those of us paying huge insurance premiums for everything can thank her and her ilk for out-of-control claims experience.
Litigation has become nutzoid. Ben Wattenberg cites celebrated cases. “In 1994, McDonald's was told to pay a woman $2.7 million after she was burned by spilling McDonald's coffee on herself. Her lawyers persuaded the jury that the coffee was too damned hot. The Supreme Court is considering a recent case about BMW of America. A jury decided that the carmakers should pay $4,000 damages to the buyer of a $40,000 car. The charge: BMW did not disclose that they had painted over a $600 blemish before selling it. Fair enough. But the jury also hit BMW with $4 million in punitive damages.” The plaintiff was a highly compensated cardiologist.
A dear friend of mine and her daughter eke out a fragile living running a small mom and pop business, except there is no pop, as he ran off with someone else decades ago. Recently they had the scare of a lifetime. The daughter supplements household income by house sitting and pet minding for friends. Some months ago the daughter and a friend of hers were taking care of animals at two houses. While away from one of these houses, unknown thieves drove a large truck from a nearby barn on the property to the house and loaded up a large heavy safe and disappeared. The truck was later found abandoned. The safe and contents have not been recovered. My friend’s very petite daughter and her friend were named as prime suspects. They were advised by legal counsel to expect to be picked up, jailed, bonded, and subjected to all manner of life stressors only the legal system can mete out. Ten months later they live with uncertainties, not having any closure from this nightmare. What they do know is that half a dozen relationships have been summarily disrupted because someone had an idea something as trivial as money was to be had.
As Olson again cites, “It was only fairly recently, as historical trends go, that the climate in our legal culture changed. Not until roughly the 1960s or 1970s did our law schools really begin to buy into the idea that the way for a country to get more justice (as well as more safety, ethics and so forth) was for more and more people to sue over more and more things. Once that change of ideas had taken place, all the rest was a matter of time. Our legal rules, which for so long had sought to constrain and curb the litigious passion, began enthusiastically stoking it. Reformers vastly liberalized procedure, making it easier for lawyers to shop around for favorable courts in which to file suits, to get the testimony of a dubious hired expert witness admitted to keep a weak case alive, and so forth. Legislators and courts enacted vague laws and standards providing plenty of new grounds to sue, and new chances to collect triple, punitive and intangible damages for such things as emotional distress and humiliation.”
Where have we come in America such that someone who has made poor life choices gets the idea that moneys are to be had from a disabled woman living in a wheelchair? The same place where hot coffee nets $2.7 million?
For seven years I have assisted a disabled friend confined to a motorized wheelchair. Brain tumors, strokes, and other medical misfortunes make her quite dependent on a small disability income while at the same time facing potentially catastrophic medical expenses. She has called me several times recently, highly agitated by fear that a mutual ‘friend’ is about to sue her for personal injury. Another friend called me today expressing the same concern. What was not my business has become my business by virtue of being queried about what to do. All the parties are well known to me and each other.
It seems some weeks ago this friend turned potential plaintiff was assisting my wheelchair-bound friend to get in and out of her lift van. During the course of moving the chair, the potential plaintiff claims to have caught her foot between the wheelchair and the van. I myself have done this a dozen times over the years and never given it a second thought. My feet have been run over by this heavy chair a number of times without consequence, but I wasn’t looking for money.
A spirit of litigation has brought us to believe insurance companies are bottomless pits with printing presses in their cellars, able to make out-of-court settlements against threat of a huge in-court jury award. Expert witnesses can be bought on the internet. We sue every conceivable entity in the land; hoping astute contingency lawyers can win the litigation lottery for us. We may win a big damage and emotional duress award but in the things that matter most, we loss it all. Someone who has suddenly become known for having a litigious spirit has potential defendant/friends now battening down the hatches, heading for the exits. I myself am one of these. I cannot but believe this woman has just cast herself into a form of personal exile in this town. The very people who most actively tried to assimilate this potential litigant into our community are those running the fastest.
Fear of litigation suddenly has become a more powerful driver of behavior than the desire for community. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this immediate of damage control behavior in a group of people who have been violated in the deepest spiritual and emotional ways. Maslow had it right when he said that we must first fulfill our security and survival needs. Only then can we pay attention to fulfilling our higher level needs to interact and belong. Right now we are running.
No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
I need not wonder why those who serve money would despise us enough to name us as defendants, even hapless little ladies in wheelchairs.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Any Pharmaceutical You Want 8-23-10
Anderson, South Carolina
While eating breakfast today with someone working on the federal court, I was given quite a sobering perspective on just how pervasive and problematic the use of pharmaceuticals and illicit ‘street’ drugs has become in our nation. Glenda describes something like 80% of her docket deriving from assorted drug cases. Apparently, dealing drugs is financially akin to winning the Power Ball Lottery for people newly arrived in this country, unable to find work. They can make more in a single drug deal than in a year under the hot tropical sun. For certain, it is difficult to find fault with someone desperate to feed their loved ones.
Perhaps ‘fault’ lies with those who actually create demand and give economic incentives to other to produce and distribute life-altering substances. One has to be careful about assigning fault. Those caught in the clutches of drug addiction or alcoholism are essentially powerless to do anything about slaking their demand for self administered torture. What started out as a recreational high or buzz is transformed into a journey of unimagined torments. For certain, these substances are altering our lives and the landscape of our land. Not an hour after this enlightening breakfast encounter, I visited houses in the ‘hood that clearly demonstrate the destructive power of addictive substances. It was stupefying to see how addiction tears out the foundations of many lives, without mercy.
Working with those in recovery has given me a vast respect for the potency of drugs and alcohol. Wonderful, beautiful, handsome people with all the potential in the universe end up very cold and still on the beds of intensive care units, if they are lucky. Others much less lucky die alone at their own hand in dingy road houses, intent on ending the litany of pain that has swept over their lives.
Alas, it’s become effortless to self-medicate misery. It’s no longer necessary to even get out of the house and go to liquor stores or dealers in the ‘hood. For several years I have received e-mail touting pharmaceuticals at a steep discount. Recently a new variant has come to my in-box; offers to sell all manner of controlled drugs, the very ones I see annihilate many dear people around me on a daily basis, without the necessity of going for a prescription and faxing it someplace off shore. “We take care of prescription” relieves us of the need for a physician or his wisdom. Self-medicating has never been easier or more destructive. It’s probably safe to say that most people around me are experiencing the challenges of pervasive pharmaceutical use, illicit and otherwise.
When I receive offers to buy low-cost Xanax, Valium, Oxycotin, or Vicodin on-line without need of my doctor’s wisdom or DEA number, I have access to a slippery slope that makes an Olympic alpine ski jump look like a toddler’s first crawl across the living room carpet. As a culture that has succumbed to material, relational, sexual, and chemical addictions, to suddenly have access to self-medication is truly more dangerous than conventional warfare. Certainly, far more of our citizens are dying and disrupting the lives of those they love than ever was accomplished by conventional explosives or Improvised Explosive Devices. The potential for long-term destructive power has never been greater than that available with self-prescribed chemical warfare applied to our minds.
In a culture where divorce, unemployment, social isolation, secular materialism, foreclosure, and relational conflict have reached historic highs, one do not have to long wonder at widespread attempts to self-medicate; to blunt the pain that comes from secular lives lived under one’s own power.
In recovery, the very first lesson learned is that life lived under one’s own power does not work; it becomes quite unmanageable and faces certain destruction. An all important lesson soon follows; proving that when we have declared our efforts at running our own lives null and void and have turned them over to the care of a Higher Power, we have a chance. It is counter-intuitive in a self-made culture long preaching the mantra of self-sufficiency, to believe that giving up and yelling ‘uncle’ is the way to resurrection, power, and renewal; but it is. One finds this moment of powerless transforming many of the lives of historical figures we hold precious in our hearts.
The message of great hope in recovery is that we can experience utterly transformed lives by virtue of a spiritual encounter with God. None other than Carl Jung, the father of modern psychiatry, declared as much, very succinctly. “To me these occurrences are phenomena. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.”
The early pioneers of twelve step recovery were no less global or hopeful in their assessment of the ability of God to transform live shipwrecked on the rocks of addiction. “The great fact is just this, and nothing less: That we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows and toward God's universe. The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves.”
Self-medication is an equal-opportunity executioner. I recognize the staff of all our local mortuaries from my regular visits. God is an equal opportunity Savior. I recognize His grace operating in my life and the lives of those who have cried ‘uncle’ and sought a new way. He has made his strength manifest in our weakness.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
While eating breakfast today with someone working on the federal court, I was given quite a sobering perspective on just how pervasive and problematic the use of pharmaceuticals and illicit ‘street’ drugs has become in our nation. Glenda describes something like 80% of her docket deriving from assorted drug cases. Apparently, dealing drugs is financially akin to winning the Power Ball Lottery for people newly arrived in this country, unable to find work. They can make more in a single drug deal than in a year under the hot tropical sun. For certain, it is difficult to find fault with someone desperate to feed their loved ones.
Perhaps ‘fault’ lies with those who actually create demand and give economic incentives to other to produce and distribute life-altering substances. One has to be careful about assigning fault. Those caught in the clutches of drug addiction or alcoholism are essentially powerless to do anything about slaking their demand for self administered torture. What started out as a recreational high or buzz is transformed into a journey of unimagined torments. For certain, these substances are altering our lives and the landscape of our land. Not an hour after this enlightening breakfast encounter, I visited houses in the ‘hood that clearly demonstrate the destructive power of addictive substances. It was stupefying to see how addiction tears out the foundations of many lives, without mercy.
Working with those in recovery has given me a vast respect for the potency of drugs and alcohol. Wonderful, beautiful, handsome people with all the potential in the universe end up very cold and still on the beds of intensive care units, if they are lucky. Others much less lucky die alone at their own hand in dingy road houses, intent on ending the litany of pain that has swept over their lives.
Alas, it’s become effortless to self-medicate misery. It’s no longer necessary to even get out of the house and go to liquor stores or dealers in the ‘hood. For several years I have received e-mail touting pharmaceuticals at a steep discount. Recently a new variant has come to my in-box; offers to sell all manner of controlled drugs, the very ones I see annihilate many dear people around me on a daily basis, without the necessity of going for a prescription and faxing it someplace off shore. “We take care of prescription” relieves us of the need for a physician or his wisdom. Self-medicating has never been easier or more destructive. It’s probably safe to say that most people around me are experiencing the challenges of pervasive pharmaceutical use, illicit and otherwise.
When I receive offers to buy low-cost Xanax, Valium, Oxycotin, or Vicodin on-line without need of my doctor’s wisdom or DEA number, I have access to a slippery slope that makes an Olympic alpine ski jump look like a toddler’s first crawl across the living room carpet. As a culture that has succumbed to material, relational, sexual, and chemical addictions, to suddenly have access to self-medication is truly more dangerous than conventional warfare. Certainly, far more of our citizens are dying and disrupting the lives of those they love than ever was accomplished by conventional explosives or Improvised Explosive Devices. The potential for long-term destructive power has never been greater than that available with self-prescribed chemical warfare applied to our minds.
In a culture where divorce, unemployment, social isolation, secular materialism, foreclosure, and relational conflict have reached historic highs, one do not have to long wonder at widespread attempts to self-medicate; to blunt the pain that comes from secular lives lived under one’s own power.
In recovery, the very first lesson learned is that life lived under one’s own power does not work; it becomes quite unmanageable and faces certain destruction. An all important lesson soon follows; proving that when we have declared our efforts at running our own lives null and void and have turned them over to the care of a Higher Power, we have a chance. It is counter-intuitive in a self-made culture long preaching the mantra of self-sufficiency, to believe that giving up and yelling ‘uncle’ is the way to resurrection, power, and renewal; but it is. One finds this moment of powerless transforming many of the lives of historical figures we hold precious in our hearts.
The message of great hope in recovery is that we can experience utterly transformed lives by virtue of a spiritual encounter with God. None other than Carl Jung, the father of modern psychiatry, declared as much, very succinctly. “To me these occurrences are phenomena. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.”
The early pioneers of twelve step recovery were no less global or hopeful in their assessment of the ability of God to transform live shipwrecked on the rocks of addiction. “The great fact is just this, and nothing less: That we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows and toward God's universe. The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves.”
Self-medication is an equal-opportunity executioner. I recognize the staff of all our local mortuaries from my regular visits. God is an equal opportunity Savior. I recognize His grace operating in my life and the lives of those who have cried ‘uncle’ and sought a new way. He has made his strength manifest in our weakness.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Privacy – Another Form of Fear 8-20-10
Anderson, South Carolina
One of my grandest joys is the sense of community immersion that comes from walking about cities in Latin America. As one roams, even at night in very small villages, a powerful sense of everyone being ‘out’ prevails There’s a splendid sense of exteriorized community; doors thrown back, windows open, lights on, people sitting outside on porches or low walls in the plaza. Music is ubiquitous. Pedestrians are legion. A delightful recent memory is seeing lovers sitting in the sublimely beautiful plaza of Valladolid at midnight. Tropical trees awash in lavender flood lights created a stage set of numinous proportion.
There appears to be no urgent need for privacy in this part of the world. People seem to think they have less to hide. While walking one hot muggy night in Zonganzotla with a friend, we were passing an open door to a modest house. Someone inside leapt up, came out, and with great animation invited us in for ‘refreshment’. Refreshment turned out to be a full scale meal of epic proportion – at midnight no less. I found more upper class hospitality in that modest cement house in the middle of the Mexican night than in the greatest hotels in the world at prime time. Meantime the media and State Department tell us how dangerous it is to be in Mexico. I’ve never felt safer.
When I return to the United States I’m always dumbfounded by how clean and deserted the streets feel. There is simply no public life in most places. There are few places designed for one to simply drop down on a seat and watch the world pass by, to chat with friends. Even the large bookshop in my town just did away with its comfy seating. In our car-dependent sprawl, there are no pedestrians. Here most of the activities of community would be construed as loitering and earn one a free night in jail for being a misdemeanor public nuisance.
This week in Atlanta I was again amazed at how few people are visible in a city of four million. Fear has interiorized them in locked cars and buildings. Recently, a number of people returning from long-term overseas assignments have lamented to me how difficult it is to reenter a land without much public life. They struggle with the limited participation in public life, the sense of isolation.
There is a growing pre-occupation with privacy in America. We are sensitized to identity theft, credit card fraud, targeting by telemarketers, and a hundred other forms of fiscal mischief. Sadly we are battening down the hatches in many areas of our lives, not wanting others to know what we are doing. We plant cypress trees along our property lines so the neighbor’s lonely dog won’t see into our empty back yards. Rather than sitting on front porches near the sidewalk, we hide on back decks enclosed with lattice screens, lest the neighbor’s wife see us from her kitchen sink while we are grilling burgers. Unlike the wide-open doors and windows in the Latin world, many windows in our houses have vinyl slat blinds occluding views in either direction; giving a profound closed sensibility to a typical suburban street.
Dark tint on car windows provides anonymity, often to the angst of law enforcement officers walking up to such cars. We use automatic door openers to drive these blacked-out vehicles into our suburban refuges. Once inside our fortresses, caller id, e-mail filters, unpublished numbers, and smart security systems insulate us from the outer world.
Privacy has recently been taken to another level, disrupting my attempts at making the world a friendlier place. For twenty years I’ve been involved with Hospice; a splendid informality made volunteering easy and rewarding. I visited patients, helped with fund raising, ad infinitum. Several weeks ago I was standing watch with a dear friend who was expected to pass within days. On one visit I asked to be notified when my friend passed on. Despite being asked by the family to participate in final arrangements and representing the church, Hospice refused to agree to call me, citing privacy rules. On my next and last visit I found the bed clean and empty. Asking when Lily died, I was told I could not be given any information, again privacy was cited. I had to call undertakers around town to find out when my friend left us. Apparently morticians are not yet worried about privacy; none of their clients talk much.
For the same two decades I’ve been taking flowers, candies, stuffed animals, and small pillows to patients in nursing homes. My last visit included giving out colorful pillows made by a quilting club. Dementia patients find much calming and comfort from whimsical pillows with tassels, zippers, and buttons; satisfying the fidgeting that comes from advancing dementia. Wanting to encourage the quilters I took a few photographs of patients with their pillows, planning to give the photos to the quilting club. Despite patients being in clear agreement about my taking pictures, nursing home staff said taking pictures is not allowed, citing new privacy laws, and I was not told in very diplomatic terms. Since when does an American citizen not have the right to give permission to someone to take her picture and give it to a benefactor? These patients are not incarcerated in prison, or are they? Has increasing obsession with privacy actually moved us towards a legislated institutional environment where we can’t even let our friends take our picture?
A lifetime lived behind tinted windows, cypress trees, window blinds, lattices, caller ID, e-mail filters, smart security, and the Health Information Privacy Act might just mean dying alone; no one being the wiser for it. There might not even be a picture for your obituary because making one will violate your privacy.
Perhaps we should have a greater fear of being islands unto ourselves and dying alone, than being found out. You probably have less to hide than you think. I do.
One of my grandest joys is the sense of community immersion that comes from walking about cities in Latin America. As one roams, even at night in very small villages, a powerful sense of everyone being ‘out’ prevails There’s a splendid sense of exteriorized community; doors thrown back, windows open, lights on, people sitting outside on porches or low walls in the plaza. Music is ubiquitous. Pedestrians are legion. A delightful recent memory is seeing lovers sitting in the sublimely beautiful plaza of Valladolid at midnight. Tropical trees awash in lavender flood lights created a stage set of numinous proportion.
There appears to be no urgent need for privacy in this part of the world. People seem to think they have less to hide. While walking one hot muggy night in Zonganzotla with a friend, we were passing an open door to a modest house. Someone inside leapt up, came out, and with great animation invited us in for ‘refreshment’. Refreshment turned out to be a full scale meal of epic proportion – at midnight no less. I found more upper class hospitality in that modest cement house in the middle of the Mexican night than in the greatest hotels in the world at prime time. Meantime the media and State Department tell us how dangerous it is to be in Mexico. I’ve never felt safer.
When I return to the United States I’m always dumbfounded by how clean and deserted the streets feel. There is simply no public life in most places. There are few places designed for one to simply drop down on a seat and watch the world pass by, to chat with friends. Even the large bookshop in my town just did away with its comfy seating. In our car-dependent sprawl, there are no pedestrians. Here most of the activities of community would be construed as loitering and earn one a free night in jail for being a misdemeanor public nuisance.
This week in Atlanta I was again amazed at how few people are visible in a city of four million. Fear has interiorized them in locked cars and buildings. Recently, a number of people returning from long-term overseas assignments have lamented to me how difficult it is to reenter a land without much public life. They struggle with the limited participation in public life, the sense of isolation.
There is a growing pre-occupation with privacy in America. We are sensitized to identity theft, credit card fraud, targeting by telemarketers, and a hundred other forms of fiscal mischief. Sadly we are battening down the hatches in many areas of our lives, not wanting others to know what we are doing. We plant cypress trees along our property lines so the neighbor’s lonely dog won’t see into our empty back yards. Rather than sitting on front porches near the sidewalk, we hide on back decks enclosed with lattice screens, lest the neighbor’s wife see us from her kitchen sink while we are grilling burgers. Unlike the wide-open doors and windows in the Latin world, many windows in our houses have vinyl slat blinds occluding views in either direction; giving a profound closed sensibility to a typical suburban street.
Dark tint on car windows provides anonymity, often to the angst of law enforcement officers walking up to such cars. We use automatic door openers to drive these blacked-out vehicles into our suburban refuges. Once inside our fortresses, caller id, e-mail filters, unpublished numbers, and smart security systems insulate us from the outer world.
Privacy has recently been taken to another level, disrupting my attempts at making the world a friendlier place. For twenty years I’ve been involved with Hospice; a splendid informality made volunteering easy and rewarding. I visited patients, helped with fund raising, ad infinitum. Several weeks ago I was standing watch with a dear friend who was expected to pass within days. On one visit I asked to be notified when my friend passed on. Despite being asked by the family to participate in final arrangements and representing the church, Hospice refused to agree to call me, citing privacy rules. On my next and last visit I found the bed clean and empty. Asking when Lily died, I was told I could not be given any information, again privacy was cited. I had to call undertakers around town to find out when my friend left us. Apparently morticians are not yet worried about privacy; none of their clients talk much.
For the same two decades I’ve been taking flowers, candies, stuffed animals, and small pillows to patients in nursing homes. My last visit included giving out colorful pillows made by a quilting club. Dementia patients find much calming and comfort from whimsical pillows with tassels, zippers, and buttons; satisfying the fidgeting that comes from advancing dementia. Wanting to encourage the quilters I took a few photographs of patients with their pillows, planning to give the photos to the quilting club. Despite patients being in clear agreement about my taking pictures, nursing home staff said taking pictures is not allowed, citing new privacy laws, and I was not told in very diplomatic terms. Since when does an American citizen not have the right to give permission to someone to take her picture and give it to a benefactor? These patients are not incarcerated in prison, or are they? Has increasing obsession with privacy actually moved us towards a legislated institutional environment where we can’t even let our friends take our picture?
A lifetime lived behind tinted windows, cypress trees, window blinds, lattices, caller ID, e-mail filters, smart security, and the Health Information Privacy Act might just mean dying alone; no one being the wiser for it. There might not even be a picture for your obituary because making one will violate your privacy.
Perhaps we should have a greater fear of being islands unto ourselves and dying alone, than being found out. You probably have less to hide than you think. I do.
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